Architecture in 2-D at the Getty Thursday

As someone who tries to bring architecture alive in print and on radio, I constantly come up against the challenge of representation: just how do you tell the story of a building when you are not in it? Can 2-D representations — be they photographs, drawings, movies or computer-generated models — ever really capture volume and space of a building, or the intangible qualities, like memory or smell and the human imprint? How do photographers, illustrators, illuminators, and other artists imagine and represent architecture within the confines of their flat media? Who do these representations serve? These are some of the questions I’ll be discussing this coming Thursday evening with a fascinating panel of experts: architect/landscape architect and watercolorist Mario Violich of the Santa Monica firm Moore Ruble Yudell.; Stephen Murray, professor of art history at Columbia University, who is creating a web site devoted to capturing and creating context for Gothic architecture; and Peter Hales, photographer, and professor of art history at the University of Illinois in Chicago. The event, starting 7:00PM at the Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center, and produced by the Getty’s Peter Tokofsky, plays off three new exhibitions that in different ways explore architecture in 2-D: Building the Medieval World: Architecture in Illuminated Manuscripts; A Record of Emotion: The Photographs of Frederick H. Evans; and Urban Panoramas: Opie, Liao, Kim.